


The Weight

by Buddleia



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Drabble, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buddleia/pseuds/Buddleia





	The Weight

When you're young, you don't understand how things work. They just do. You press a button and the red man turns green. You get into a car and it takes you places. You get into a big room and it flies. Magic.

When you get a little older, anxiety hits. Electricity explains the red man, although you don't know how. The red man is often broken. Some people hit the button repeatedly in what must be attempts to make the crossing lights work faster. Sometimes they break. The car breaks. The big room - the plane - does it ever break? What keeps it up? At least the car is on the ground.

A little more experience, a little more time for things not to happen, and you start to accept that things just work. They don't always work in the newspapers, planes fall from the sky, cars explode, electricity kills, but that's it. Every year the University makes mooing noises about financial desperation and lack of funds, until you'd think it was on its last legs. Every year things carry on and things just keep working.

Then, boom, things happen. They really fucking do. Why doesn't the chair work properly for anyone? Why is the ground shaking? What keeps up a puddlejumper? How does a stargate work, really work? If the power from the Naquadah generator is rerouted for maximum efficiency, will the seventeen people not within the core area suddenly find themselves the best way for christ knows how many kilowatts to ground? In a storm, can the walls be trusted not to crumple? And if not, what do you do? You. Yes, you, Rodney, _you_. Right fucking _now_. What do you do? There are a bunch of people looking at you impatiently, waiting for you to save them, not realising that what they're asking is actually close to impossible, all of them used to things just working, even the ones with guns and that thousand-yard stare that means they've had serious combat experience.

Actually, that might be the scariest thing of all.

 

~end~


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